The present invention relates to a disk player in which a magazine containing a number of disks is loaded into the player, and the disks are selectively played back.
A conventional disk player for playing disks extracted from a magazine has the following problems:
(1) In the conventional disk player, sometimes no disk is available on the selected tray in the magazine. In this case, the disk player operates as follows: When a disk on a tray is specified, the tray is pulled out of the magazine to locate the disk thus specified. When it is determined that the specified disk is not available, the tray is put back into the magazine and the disk player is placed in a standby state.
Therefore, in the case where no disk is provided in the magazine, whenever such a disk is selected or specified by the operator, the above-described operation is carried out in vain, thus wasting time. Accordingly, operator must restart the player after manually confirming that another disk or disks are available in the magazine.
In the case of a disk player installed on a vehicle, sometimes the drive section of the disk player is disposed in a location such as the trunk which the operator cannot reach, while the control section is located near the operator's seat. In this case, it is considerably troublesome to confirm the presence or absence of disks.
(2) Furthermore, in the conventional disk player, playback of the disk sometimes becomes impossible due to tracking errors caused, for instance, by external vibration. In such a case, playback of the disk s suspended or the disk is put back into the magazine and the reproducing operation is suspended.
A disk player employing a magazine holding a number of disks is of course larger in size than a disk player which has no such a magazine. Therefore, when it is required to install the former type of disk on a vehicle, it is difficult to position it on the front instrument panel so that the operator can reach it with ease. Thus the drive section the disk player is usually installed in a location which the operator inside the vehicle cannot reach, for instance, in the trunk of the vehicle, while the control section of the disk player is installed near the operator's seat.
If a multidisk player of this type is operated in the above-described manner in which the reproducing operation is suspended whenever the playback of a disk becomes impossible, the player suffers from a difficulty that, even in the case where the playback of only the disk on the turntable is impossible, the magazine must be taken out of the trunk to exchange the disk for another.
(3) Still further, in the conventional disk player, when a disk is specified or selected, the tray bearing the disk is pulled out of the magazine and the disk is placed on the turntable for reproduction. When a playback suspending operation is carried out during reproduction, the spindle motor is stopped with the disk clamped on the turntable. In the ejecting operation, the disk is released from the turntable and returned to the tray. The tray bearing the disk is put back into the magazine, thus leaving the disk player.
As described above, in the conventional disk player, the disk is held clamped on the turntable when the playback suspending operation is carried out during reproduction. In the case where the disk player is installed on a vehicle, since the disk is clamped on the turntable, the disk may be scratched by a metal part of the disk player due to vibration during the movement of the vehicle.